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The Wine Experience

Find it: Jordan Creek Town Center, inside the Younkers department store Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. The kitchen closes an hour early every day, but you can still get appetizers if you ask nicely. Info: 515-457-8577; www.wineexperiencejc.com

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Scene: The Wine Experience might as well have a secret password. It’s hidden on the lower north side of Youn­kers, past an acre of dress-up fleece options for women of a certain age, and barely noticeable to untrained eyes.

But once you find it and step inside, it’s like a private clubhouse, a hush-hush get­away from the mall’s un­washed masses. The space is cozy, but bigger than you might expect, with a curving bar and a dozen cafe tables surrounded by shelves and shelves of wine — a good sign. A handful of couples filled half of the tables on a recent Tuesday night.

Dinner: The kitchen is barely big enough for an Easy Bake Oven, but you wouldn’t know it from the menu. There’s a decent mix of small plates, sandwiches, pastas and pizza, all under $15. I couldn’t decide on a main dish so I ordered three small ones: a cup of creamy lobster bisque ($4.50), a plate of prosciutto-wrapped dates filled with oozy Maytag Blue cheese ($9.95) and a mixed-greens salad with craisins, slivered apple, candied walnuts and roasted cubes of butternut squash perked up with cranberry vinai­grette ($10.95). The squash tasted like sweet potato fries, which seemed to get along with all the other sweet flavors on the plate. But no bite was better than the dates, which were delicious.

My husband had the basil pesto chicken pizza ($12.95), which involved stretchy mozzarella and fresh-tasting basil around chunks of chicken on a thin but sturdy crust. Not bad at all.

Cocktails: If there were actual cocktails, we didn’t see them, but the Wine Experience lives up to its name. The list changes seasonally with a dozen or so whites, a dozen or so reds, and a few sparklies if you’re feeling fancy. I can’t say I tasted the “seductive nose of apricots, spice and ripe berries” in my $9 glass of Shiraz (the Chook, from Australia’s McLaren Vale) or the “pineapple-guava flavors” in the $7 Sauvignon Blanc (Rodney Strong, from California’s Russian River Valley), but what I did taste I liked.

Service: Friendly, but slow and a little scattered. One of our two servers took our pizza to the wrong table, where it was promptly pawed by the other diners. Not the server’s fault, of course, but it meant a longer wait for a fresh pie.

Bottom line: I’m actually a little reluctant to write about this place and spoil the secret. (Sorry, regulars.) If I can’t get a seat there the next time I want a shopping break, I’ll be peeved, surrounded by micro-fleece vests.